1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a digital filter, design method thereof, design device, and digital filter design program, and more particularly, to a design method of FIR filter.
2. Description of the Related Art
An FIR (Finite Impulse Response) filter is one type of digital filter. This FIR filter is a type of filter which is provided with tapped delay lines made up of a plurality of delayers, multiplies output signals of the respective taps several-fold, adds up the multiplication results and outputs the addition result, and has the following advantages. First, since the poles of a transfer function of the FIR filter exists only at the origin of the z-plane, the circuit is always stable. Second, if filter coefficients are symmetric, it is possible to realize a completely accurate rectilinear phase characteristic.
For this FIR filter, an impulse response expressed by a finite time length constitutes filter coefficients as are. Therefore, designing an FIR filter is equal to determining filter coefficients so that a desired frequency characteristic is obtained. Conventionally, an FIR filter is designed using the following method; filter coefficients are calculated based on a target frequency characteristic, the filter coefficients are subjected to windowing and a finite number of coefficient groups are obtained. Then, the coefficient groups obtained are subjected to an FFT (fast Fourier transform) to be transformed to a frequency characteristic and it is checked whether the frequency characteristic satisfies the target characteristic or not.
When filter coefficients are calculated from the target frequency characteristic, for example, a convolution, etc., using a Chebyshev approximation is performed based on a ratio between a sampling frequency and cutoff frequency. The number of coefficients obtained in this way becomes enormous and using all those coefficients will result in an extremely large number of taps and multipliers of the filter circuit, which is unrealistic. For this reason, the number of filter coefficients acquired through a convolution calculation is reduced to a degree that it falls within a range of practicality by means of windowing.
However, the frequency characteristic of the FIR filter obtained using the conventional design method depends on a window function and approximate expression, and therefore unless these are correctly set, it is not possible to obtain a preferable target frequency characteristic. However, it is generally difficult to set the window function or approximate expression appropriately. Furthermore, when windowing is performed to reduce the number of filter coefficients, a discretization error occurs in the frequency characteristic, making it difficult to realize a desired frequency characteristic. Especially, there is a problem that it is extremely difficult to obtain an ideal frequency characteristic having an inhibition band (band between pass band and cutoff band) with a steep inclination.
Furthermore, obtaining a desired frequency characteristic using the conventional filter design method requires a trial and error method of subjecting the filter coefficients obtained to an FFT while checking the frequency characteristic. Thus, the conventional art requires skilled technicians to take time and trouble its design for and has a problem that it is not easy to design an FIR filter of a desired characteristic easily.
A method of realizing a steep frequency characteristic by cascading a plurality of FIR filters produced using the above described conventional method is known (e.g., see Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 5-243908). Furthermore, a method of adjusting a filter bank band by inserting a plurality of zero values between taps (between filter coefficients) of a tapped delay line is also known (e.g., see National Publication of International Patent Application No. 6-503450). However, according to these methods, the filter pass band becomes narrower than before adjustment and it is not possible to widen the bandwidth of the pass band to have a steep inclination.